Pickup currently unavailable
Taste balance notes
- Sweetness: 9/10
- Acidity: 8/10
- Bitterness: 2/10
Blend of:
Sebastian Ramirez's Maragesha, Cold fermentation Washed
Tamiru Tadesse's JARC74158, Anaerobic Natural
CONTRAST
[A
llow one side to reveal something in the other]
During one of our Coffee Professionals Club sessions, we prepared a palate-development exercise using natural ingredients. One category focused entirely on bitterness. Cinchona bark, birch bark, quassia bark, gentian root, and wild cherry bark. Tasted alone, they varied in intensity, but they were exactly what you might expect. Dry, sharp, and intensely bitter. The question came quickly from the members, Where would you ever use these?
The answer is that we already use. These bitter botanicals appear in some of our Original Creation drinks. They rarely appear at the forefront as a primary flavour in the drinks. Instead, they change how everything around them is perceived. They make sweetness shine, extend the finish, and create a dimension that may be difficult to identify on the first sip but easy to miss once it is gone. A sweet Elderflower iced tea can be pleasant without them. With carefully measured bitterness, however, the elderflower tastes brighter, the sweetness feels more controlled, and the drink becomes more complete, with a pleasant, long-lasting bitterness.
That experience points toward a contradiction we often encounter in flavour development, a drink can be busy and still be boring. Complexity is not simply a count of ingredients. Imagine two fruit blends. The first contains ten different kinds of berries. The second contains only three fruits, but each comes from a different category. One berry, one tropical fruit, and one citrus fruit. The first may be intense and delicious, but all ten ingredients move in a similar direction. The second contains fewer ingredients, but it can feel more layered because it stimulates the palate from several directions. Each category creates another point of contrast, giving the taster another reason to stay curious.
When developing a coffee blend, cocktail, or non-alcoholic drink, we generally work in one of two ways. We can reinforce a flavour by combining related elements to create synergy and one concentrated expression. Or we can bring together elements from distant categories and allow their differences to widen the experience. The first approach creates a strong, focused character. The second can create layered dimensions.
But difference alone does not create complexity. Unrelated elements can easily mute one another or feel scattered. Contrast needs continuity: a shared character that glues the components together, helping contrast become complexity rather than noise.
This is the idea behind Seasonal Edition #3: CONTRAST.
The blend brings together Sebastián Ramírez’s Maragesha from Colombia and Tamiru Tadesse’s JARC 74158 from Ethiopia. You can see the contrast before brewing them. Maragesha is a rare variety associated with the large physical characteristics of Maragogype and Gesha. JARC 74158 is a cultivated Ethiopian variety developed through the Jimma Agricultural Research Center, and this particular lot presents a much smaller bean.
Their identity continue in opposite directions. One comes from Colombia and the other from Ethiopia. One is washed and the other is natural. Even before we taste them, they offer contrast in origin, variety, physical structure, and drying process. Side by side, it only shows contrast and they are hardly look as being in one blend.
But they share one essential overlap, a wine-like character shaped by extended fermentation in controlled environments. Sebastián’s Maragesha, the coffee is depulped and fermented in tanks for 120 hours at no more than 14°C. The resulting wine-like character is expressed in the cup through along with notes of pomegranate and eucalyptus. Tamiru’s JARC 74158 whole cherries undergo 96-hours of anaerobic fermentation, followed by 28 days of drying as a whole cherries. Its expression is darker, heavier, and wilder flavours through blackberry jam, prune, mangosteen, and red wine. The washed Maragesha brings clarity, brightness, and structure. The Anaerobic Natural 74158 brings dark fruit, body, and intensity. Fermentation connects them through a shared wine-like feeling, while their different processes allow each coffee to have its own characteristics.
In the final blend, grape and blackberry form a dark-fruit centre. Coconut-like sweetness rounds the cup, while grapefruit zest gives it a vibrant character. The darker fruit creates a pleasant sweetness that supports the other flavours, and the tropical and citrus notes add layers of complexity. Their common wine-like feeling remains, but the other flavours turn into something different, while clues to each component remain.
That is the role of contrast. It is not there simply to place two opposites beside each other. It allows one side to reveal something in the other.
Like the bitter botanicals from our tasting session, contrast does not always announce itself as a separate flavour. But when it is used with intention, everything around it feels deeper, clearer, and more complete.